Wednesday, February 27, 2013

I've been busy...

I want to beg your forgiveness for not posting as much as I should lately.
I've worked in Toledo for the last three years, and recently took an opportunity to participate in a startup our company is doing in Flat Rock, related to the Ford plant there.
I am now the Automation Engineer there (as I was in Toledo), and the Maintenance Manager.
This started at Christmas when we started moving machinery in during the holidays.

Before I took this position, I had argued that I could come up with a way of cutting the runners (those little tabs on molded parts like the "tree" your model cart parts came on) and flaming the edges to remove angel hair that might fall in the painting process.
I did, and this is the simulation of it.

So I've been doing two jobs since Christmas.
This week we are installing the equipment.
First, the model of the press came out wrong, so the dimensions of the robot placement were wrong.
We realized that as soon as we mounted the robots on their pedestals,
The pedestals had to be lowered 24".
When the robots were remounted in my absence, they were place 90 degree off and had to be removed and replaced correctly. We caught the big one before it hit the floor.

Today the conveyors arrived. Thank God. They only have to be modified a little. But everyone agrees they are beautifully made. They were supplied by a company repped by a salesman I've known for years.

This last weekend we moved some more processes up from Toledo. Very technical stuff with robots and vision cameras and ultrasonic plastic welders. Temperamental stuff.
Late Saturday we got one part through the line finally.
Sunday we spent 10 hours getting the line to run smoothly after identifying some intermittent equipment failures.

Today is the first day since Friday where I am not running a fever and breaking out in sweat it in my sleep.
Thank God.